Even if Facebook’s Friend Suggestions does a wonderful job of helping you discover new friends, there are better ways to conduct a Facebook people search for those you are interested in.

In this article, let us look at tips for doing a Facebook people search more effectively. We will cover both Facebook’s inbuilt FriendFinder as well as a third-party application for advanced people search. Note that these searches find people based on the information they have entered in their Facebook profile.

Facebook People Search with FriendFinder

Facebook Friend Finder is a collection of search tools to help you find people you know on Facebook. You can access the Friend Finder page from the Connect With Friends widget on the right sidebar on the Facebook homepage.

Let’s see the different ways you can conduct a Facebook people search using Friend Finder.

#1: Find People From Your Email Address Book

Facebook can find people for you from your email address book. All major webmail services like Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail are supported.

If you use desktop email apps like MS Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, or Apple Mail, click the Upload Contact File link from where you can download an app for Outlook or upload contact lists from other apps.

#2: Find Classmates

Based on information in the Education and Work section of their profiles, Facebook helps you find former or current high school or university classmates.

#3: Find Coworkers

Similar to the Classmates search, you can also search for Coworkers in your past or current organizations by entering the name of the Company.

#4: Find People From Instant Messaging (IM) Networks

You can simply enter your AOL, ICQ, or Windows Live Messenger credentials to let Facebook find your IM buddies.

Advanced Search Application

Advanced Search 2.0 is a better tool to search for friends on Facebook. Visit this link to access and install the application.

If prompted to share your email address, click No, and click Click here to add the “Advanced Search” application link at the bottom. Click Allow in the Allow Access? prompt to proceed. Advanced Search first prompts you to fill out your profile and contact information to help others find you. You can choose to enter additional information about yourself if you like or leave it blank and click Save and Continue. You can optionally invite your friends to try the app or Skip that step. Finally, click Add Bookmark to access Advanced Search quickly from your profile.

After you complete these steps, you can access Advanced Search at any time by clicking the Applications link in your Facebook sidebar.

#5: Find People by Age/Gender/Relationship Status/Star Sign

On the Find People tab, you can search for people of a specific Gender and within a certain Age group. You can search by specific Relationship Status, or by their Star Sign. You can even search for people who have the same Birthday as you.

#6: Find People by Location (Country/Region)

You can combine the above search restricting to a specific Country, Region, and City. For example, you can search for single people in your area according to their Star Sign and who they are interested in meeting.

#7: Find People with Similar Interests

For each of the above searches, you can further refine them to find people who share your interests. You can find people according to their Political preferences, or their Religious beliefs. You can restrict searches to people who are members of a Facebook Group.

Best of all, you can use this to find people who are fans of a specific Artist, Celebrity, Politician, Author, or Product/Company Facebook Fan Page.

Using Advanced Search 2.0, you can mix and match these search criteria to your hearts content. This app currently indexes profiles of about 240 million people in its database. The lesser criteria you use, the more people you will find.

Did you find new friends on Facebook using these tips? Let us know in the comments!

The post 7 Tips For Effective Facebook People Search appeared first on MakeUseOf.

In the hundreds of tweets in your stream, how do you distinguish the signal from the noise?

How can you use Twitter without missing the important stuff and not getting stressed out reading each and every tweet? In this article, let us explore 3 little known ways how to use Twitter in a way that will not overwhelm you.

The Twitter Times

The Twitter Times gives you three newspaper-style views of what’s hot on Twitter in real-time:

1. A personalized newspaper generated from the Twitter feed of people you follow
2. A view of the most tweeted news stories from major media sources
3. A view of the most tweeted links from popular Twitter Lists

For the personalized newspaper view, you should sign in with your Twitter account. The first time you use the service, it takes up to an hour to generate your personalized newspaper. Twitter Times will send you an @reply when your newspaper is delivered. For subsequent visits, you can simply enter your username to access your Twitter Times.

The latest stories are shown in the main section of the page, while top news stories from history are displayed in a column on the right. You can click a headline to visit the original site in a new tab of your browser. For many stories, you can click “˜Show all text’ to see the entire post within the site.

For each story in your newspaper, The Twitter Times shows you which friends tweeted it, along with friends of friends. You can ReTweet any story using the retweet button.

Using the Media Sources and Twitter Lists sections, you can get newspaper-style digests of the most popular content being shared on Twitter without drowning in information overload.

Feedtrace

Feedtrace is a personalized link aggregator service based on Twitter. It shows you the Top 50 links to blog posts, articles, news, pictures, etc. ranked automatically based on popularity of the link, authority of the people linking, and the content you have liked and shared in the past.

Sign in to your Twitter account from the top left to access the Feedtrace sidebar. This works as a browsing companion while you check out the Top 50 links being shared on Twitter. You can check the “˜only following’ box to filter only those links shared by people your follow. If you wish, you can also see the top links from a specific website, for example the New York Times.

When you click on a link, the sidebar minimizes to the left, letting you view the linked page. From within the sidebar, you can ReTweet any of the links. Using the buttons at the top, you can also refresh, lock, or hide the Feedtrace sidebar.

To see what people are saying in the tweets about the link you’re visiting, click the Buzz tab on the sidebar. From here, you can also @reply to the person, mark the tweet as a Favorite, or Retweet it.

Cadmus

Cadmus filters your stream to find similar tweets and automatically groups them to reduce the noise. It also highlights popular conversations among your Twitter friends so you don’t miss them.

Once you add your Twitter account to Cadmus, it shows you a sidebar with personalized trending topics and popular content from different time spans. You can view most popular content from the last 6 or 12 hours, last day, or even last week. You can retweet, @reply, or send a new tweet from within Cadmus.

Important tweets are displayed in the main window. You can expand Twitter conversations as shown below, which shows @replies as comments. You can also “˜add a comment’, which sends an @reply on Twitter.

Related tweets on the same topic are grouped together as “˜Related Posts’. You can expand them to see all the tweets of the same topic. Apart from Twitter, you can also add RSS feeds and FriendFeed streams to Cadmus. By intelligently grouping together similar tweets and highlighting the most popular content, Cadmus ensures that you never miss the really important updates from your Twitter friends.

You might also want to check out Topikality and ReadTwit, two other services we’ve covered before on MakeUseOf to help deal with too much information.

The Twitter Times, Feedtrace, and Cadmus are simple ways to find great content being shared on Twitter, personalized to your taste. Each of them has a different interface and style. You can choose whichever suits your needs the best and enjoy the best of Twitter without suffering from information overload. If you have any other tips, share with us in the comments!

The post 3 Little Known Ways To Use Twitter Without Information Overload appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Let us now proceed with the next steps concerning Facebook privacy controls in the context of applications, friends, news feed, wall posts, groups, ads, and quitting Facebook.

#9: Control What Your Friends Can Share About You

As explained earlier, your Facebook friends can reveal information about you to applications of their choice even if you yourself do not use those applications. A typical example is when your friends use a birthday application that reminds them of your birthday so that they can send you a card or gift.

Unfortunately, this also means they reveal your religious, sexual, and political preferences as well as other personal information about you. Birthday information is also misused by financial fraudsters. All of this can be shared via more than 500,000 applications with more than 1 Million developers from over 180 countries.

If you don’t want to do that, go to Privacy Settings > Applications and Websites page. Click Edit Settings for What your friends can share about you. Choose what you want to share or uncheck all boxes for maximum privacy.

#10: Reduce Visibility of Your Facebook Friendships

Your friends list is visible to everyone on Facebook by default. Some people browse others’ friends for voyeuristic or marketing purposes. Unfortunately, Facebook now considers your friends list as “publicly available information” so there is no way to hide it completely. You can make it slightly harder for strangers to see your friend list. Go to your profile page, click the pencil icon next to your Friends box, and uncheck the Show Friend List to Everyone box.

Note that your friends list is still visible to all applications (and their developers) as well as to anyone who knows your Facebook username or ID.

#11: Remove Unused Applications

As explained in “9. Privacy From Your Applications” in the original guide, you should review the list of Applications you have authorized on Facebook and remove unused apps.

Go to Settings > Application Settings from the top menu, and review all applications listed by choosing Authorized, Allowed to Post, and Granted Additional Permissions from the drop-down.

#12: Minimize Publishing Recent Activity To News Feed

The ability to control the Recent Activity news feed on your wall as described in “5. Control Automatic Wall Posts and News Feed Updates” in the original guide has now been removed from Facebook. Therefore, there is no way to stop notifications appearing on your wall when you add a new friend, comment on or like a friend’s status, note, photo, video, or link.

However, you can still stop certain kinds of notifications from appearing as Recent Activity on your wall news feed. This includes notifications when you become a fan of a page, are RSVPed to an event, receive a gift, join a Group, or are tagged in a photo or video. To do this, go to Settings > Application Settings from the top menu, and change the drop-down to Allowed to Post. For each of the applications listed below, click Edit Settings, Additional Permissions and uncheck the Publish to streams box.

• Ads and Pages
• Developer
• Events
• Gifts
• Groups
• Links
• Photos & Videos

There are two additional points to note:

1. Wall-to-wall posts with a friend are only visible to mutual friends of both.
2. You can still manually Remove all Recent Activity news feed posts from your wall.

#13: Control Privacy Of Wall Posts

Your Facebook status messages can now be public and searchable from external search engines like Google. You can also set Facebook privacy controls on a per-post basis, but it’s better to set the default privacy setting for your wall posts. Go to Privacy Settings > Profile Information, and select Only Friends for Posts by Me.

Next, to control your wall privacy, go to your Profile page and click the Options link under the Share button. Then click Settings. Here, you can control whether your friends can write to your wall and who can see wall posts made by your friends.

It’s better to restrict who sees wall posts made by your friends. For example, college buddies may write things on your wall that may not be suitable for a professional audience.

#14: Hide Group Memberships In Your Profile Information

The Groups that you are a member of are listed in your profile. To remove them from your profile, go to Settings > Application Settings from the top menu, and click Edit Settings for the Groups application.

Click (remove) to remove Group memberships from the Info section of your profile. Set the privacy level for visibility of your group memberships to Only Me.

Note that when you post a message to a Group’s wall, a notification will still be posted on your profile. This step simply makes the list of groups invisible on your Profile page Info tab.

#15: Avoid Appearing In Advertisements

There are no changes to Facebook privacy regarding advertisements, but the location to access these settings has changed. Now, go to Settings > Account Settings, and click the Facebook Ads tab.

Set both options under Ads shown by third party applications and Ads shown by Facebook to No one to avoid appearing in any advertisements on Facebook.

#16: Understand Difference Between Deactivating and Deleting Account

These privacy changes in Facebook have prompted some users to quit Facebook altogether. If you decide that Facebook is not your cup of tea, you must understand the difference between deactivating and deleting your Facebook account.

From Settings > Account Settings, you will see an option to Deactivate Account. Deactivation simply puts your Facebook account in a suspended state. All your profile information, pictures, friends, and wall posts remain intact on Facebook servers, but are not accessible to other Facebook users including your friends. You can resume using Facebook as before simply by logging into Facebook again.

If you wish to permanently delete your account, you need to submit your request on this page. This will remove all your information from Facebook’s servers, and there will be no way to access or recover your account and profile information again.

This completes our guide to how you can regain your privacy in Facebook to the extent possible, while also explaining which Facebook privacy controls are no longer available. How are these changes affecting your Facebook experience? Do you have any other tips to share? Shout out in the comments!

The post 8 MORE Steps To Regain Control Of Your Facebook Privacy appeared first on MakeUseOf.

However, Facebook has updated their privacy settings and philosophy since then, which brings us to this updated guide to Facebook privacy.

In this Part 1, we will cover 8 steps to reset Facebook privacy settings – covering privacy in the context of search visibility, photos and videos, relationships and contact information.

#1: Understand The Basics: Facebook Terminology and Privacy Settings

It is important to understand the concepts used by Facebook before we proceed. Facebook uses 4 levels of privacy:

• Everyone
• Friends of Friends
• Only Friends
• Custom

Everyone means everyone on the Internet, including search engines, including any user not on Facebook. Friends of Friends means all friends of everyone you have confirmed as a Friend. Only Friends means only those people you have confirmed as a Friend. The Custom setting is used to tweak privacy by including or excluding specific friends or set of friends using Friend Lists.

The new Privacy Settings Page (Settings > Privacy Settings from top menu) has the following sections:

• Profile Information
• Contact Information
• Applications & Websites
• Search
• Block List

Each section is quite self-explanatory, and it is a good idea to review your privacy level settings for each item in these sections. Key settings affecting privacy are discussed in the rest of this guide.

#2: Using the new Privacy Transition Tool

If you have not yet logged into Facebook after the privacy changes in December 2009, you will be shown a “Privacy Transition Tool“ as shown below. If you have already logged in and used the tool, skip this and proceed to the next step.

On the second screen of the tool, do not accept the default suggestions provided by Facebook. For all options, to reset Facebook privacy settings just select the Old Settings option on the right as shown above, select Save Settings, and finish the Wizard. Be aware that even if you do this, several privacy settings are changed by default, so read on!

#3: Create/Review Your Friend Lists

Friend Lists continue to be the bedrock of your Facebook privacy. Creating and using Friend Lists wisely will make a huge difference in how easily you can control your privacy on Facebook. If you are not yet using them, create them right away, as explained earlier.

If you have already created them, this is a good time to review them. I find it most convenient to create buckets of Friend Lists such as Family, School/College friends, Colleagues, and Online Acquaintances but you are free to use whatever model you choose.

#4: Control Search Visibility in Facebook, Google & Other Search Engines

There are two separate settings for controlling your visibility when someone searches from within Facebook and from other search engines like Google. Access these settings from Privacy Settings > Search.

The first setting is for searches within Facebook. Change the default Everyone to Only Friends if you want only your Friends to get your information via searches in Facebook.

Facebook now considers your name, profile picture, gender, city, friend list, and fan pages as “publicly available information”. This means by default when someone searches Google with your name, they can see this information. Uncheck the Allow box for Public Search Results to prevent Googlers from seeing this information.

#5: Control Who Sees Your Photo Albums & Profile Pictures

There are no changes to Photo Album privacy settings except for the Profile Pictures Album. To set privacy for each of your Photo Albums, go to Privacy Settings > Profile Information, and click Edit Settings for Photo Albums. You will be able to choose a privacy level for each of your photo albums as before.

Earlier, all your profile pictures were visible to all your friends. Now, after the privacy changes, you can also set a privacy level for the Profile Pictures album. Note that your current profile picture remains visible to all your friends.

#6: Control Who Sees Photos & Videos You Are Tagged In

People are often embarrassed when their friends tag them in compromising photos or videos and these become visible to other folks. To control who gets to see photos and videos in which you are tagged by someone else, go to the Privacy Settings > Profile Information section, and choose the privacy setting you wish.

The Custom setting allows you to use your Friend Lists, so you can either include specific Friends or exclude Colleagues/Online Acquaintances from seeing these tagged photos/videos.

Note that this does not stop announcements with a preview thumbnail photo from appearing on your wall. To prevent these, read on.

#7: Stop Wall Notifications When A Friend Tags You In A Photo or Video

Go to Settings > Application Settings from the top menu and click Edit Settings for the Photos application. In the dialog box, select Additional Permissions.

Under Photos has permission to:, uncheck the Publish to streams box. Do the same for the Videos application. This will stop those wall announcements showing preview pictures/videos in which you are tagged from appearing on your wall.

#8: Control Relationship Status & Contact Information Visibility

Many people don’t want their relationship status and breakups visible to others. To control who sees your Family Members, Relationship Status, Interested In, and Looking For information, go to Privacy Settings > Profile Information and choose the desired privacy level for Family and Relationship.

If you want to set it to Only Me, choose Custom and then select Only Me from the dialog box.

Similarly, you should share your contact information cautiously, especially phone numbers and email addresses. Go to Privacy Settings > Contact Information and select privacy levels for each item. You can restrict phone number and email address visibility conveniently using Friend Lists.

In the upcoming Part 2 of this guide, we will cover steps you can take to reset Facebook privacy settings in the context of applications, friends, news feed, wall posts, groups, ads, and quitting Facebook. Have questions or other tips to share? Shout out in the comments!

The post 8 Steps To Regain Control Of Your Facebook Privacy appeared first on MakeUseOf.

But that doesn’t stop us from using alternative search engines to search for people, does it? Let’s look at 5 alternative search engines that work better than Google when you are searching for people online.

It is useful to remember, that another important use of people search engines is to find out if anyone is impersonating you online. If searches for your name reveal somebody else masquerading with your identity, you can take the appropriate corrective action.

Pipl

Pipl is a people search engine that searches the deep web, which is not typically crawled by search engines like Google.

As you can see in the screenshot above, you can search via name, email, username and phone number. A simple search of my name revealed some of my online profiles (LinkedIn, Windows Live), several blog posts and webpages with my name, and surprisingly, all of the online avatars I’ve used on various social networks. Similarly, a search with my username ScepticGeek also returned relevant links to all the social networks where I use that username.

If you think having pseudonyms as usernames protects your real identity, this can be an eye-opener! For more, let Karl show you how to Find A Lost Love or Friend with Pipl.

Wink

Wink is a powerful people search engine that allows you to enter several search criteria. You can search by name, location, school, work, or interests like music, TV, and movies. So if you vaguely remember a school friend named Andy who liked rock music, Wink is your best bet in finding him on the web!

Wink has hundreds of millions of user profiles in its database. As soon as you start typing a name, Wink suggests matches from its database. For better results with Wink, you should include as many details as you can. Birthdays, high school or university, company, hometown, and interests ““ all help refine your search and find exactly the person you seek.

YoName

Using YoName, you can search for people using their real names, usernames, email address, or phone number on 26 different social networks including popular ones like Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, and Twitter.

For more information about how YoName can help you find lost friends, check out 3 Ways To Find People With Social Search Engines.

PeekYou

PeekYou is a people search engine previously covered in the MakeUseOf directory. Like with Wink, you can search using real name, username, location, work, school, and interests.

I was amazed at the accuracy of PeekYou in returning relevant results for my name. Apart from social networking profiles, the results also included links to background check information, shopping, web pages and blog posts, books, and images. You can further refine your search results by location, gender, and age.

123People

As described earlier in the MakeUseOf directory, 123People shows you an aggregated web page of the complete online presence of any person.

Results include all publicly available information such as images, web pages, blogs, tweets, videos, documents, social networking profiles, and even a tag cloud!

Did we miss any of your favorite people search tools? Share them with us in the comments!

The post 5 Powerful Ways To Google People From Alternative Search Engines appeared first on MakeUseOf.

In this article, let us see why Faviki is an attractive social bookmarking service which makes bookmarking easier, uses smarter tags, and integrates with Delicious as well as Twitter.

What are Semantic Tags?

If you browse the “Avatar” tag in Delicious, you will find that some bookmarks refer to Avatar the movie, while others refer to Avatar as used in Twitter and Clip Art. In other words, Delicious does not know exactly what you mean when you give an “Avatar“ tag to a bookmark. Whereas on Wikipedia, you can see the disambiguation page for Avatar, which shows that Avatar may be a tag that can be used for the 2009 movie, as well as for several other films, graphical representations of people, games, books, and more.

Faviki is a social bookmarking service that uses Wikipedia-style semantic tags, so your tag specifies exactly what you mean when you bookmark something. This open standard format is called Common Tags.

Why Use Faviki?

• Faviki uses universal, common tags, that have Wikipedia-defined meanings. Your world of knowledge captured in your bookmarks is universally connected and discoverable to your friends via these semantic tags.
• Tagging is simple ““ Faviki suggests tags automatically, also allowing you to clarify exactly what you mean.
• You do not need to switch from Delicious. You can import all your bookmarks from Delicious. Bookmarks with semantic-rich information saved in Faviki will automatically be saved in Delicious as well.
• Automatically share your bookmarks via Twitter.
• Multi-language Support: Faviki is the world’s first and only bookmarking service that supports tagging in 15 languages.

Using the Bookmarklet

Go to the Faviki bookmarklet page to install it in your browser. When you are on a web page you want to bookmark, click the bookmarklet. It shows you suggested tags for that bookmark. You are free to choose from the suggested tags and add your own by typing and selecting from the auto-complete list.

Along with tagging, Faviki also allows you to enter additional information about the bookmark. Click the “edit bookmark >” link to go to a page where you can add your own notes and copy text from the webpage to add to your bookmark. This makes it easy for your friends to discover exactly why you thought the page worth bookmarking.

Semantic Tagging At Work

Suppose I am bookmarking Susan’s article at MakeUseOf on Fedora 12. As Wikipedia shows, Fedora can mean many different things ““ the Linux OS, a 1978 film, or even a KGB agent! When I type “Fedora” in the tagging box of the bookmarklet, I can choose precisely what I mean:

Auto Save to Delicious, Auto Share on Twitter

Go to the Edit Profile page and enter your Delicious and Twitter account information.

You can enable auto save to Delicious and auto sharing on Twitter. You can also specify how tags with spaces, like “Google Chrome”, are handled.

Importing Delicious Bookmarks

You can import all your existing precious collection of bookmarks from Delicious. Faviki will help convert your existing tags into semantic Common Tags. Go to Import from the top menu to add your Delicious account information. After you’re done, click Import Bookmarks to start the import process. Faviki will now import your Delicious bookmarks, analyze your custom tags, and suggest equivalent Common Tags. Here is how Faviki displayed suggestions for my import:

The rows shaded in dark are the tags that you need to correct because Faviki could not find their meaning. In order to clarify what I meant with my “Films” tag, I enter “movie” and click search. Faviki presents a drop-down of search results from Wikipedia, from which I choose the correct meaning ““ “Film”, in this case.

Also, you can see in the above example that my “windows” tag was actually ambiguous since it could have easily meant windows in our homes. Faviki automatically suggested the correct semantic tag in this case – “Microsoft Windows”. What this means is that my MS Windows bookmarks are now easily searchable and shareable with other users interested in MS Windows. Other users who may be searching for home windows will not see these bookmarks.

Review all the dark rows and correct tags as necessary. You can click the “+” sign to expand a row and show all the bookmarks with that tag. When you are done, click the Save and initiate import button. Be patient, the importing can take a long time, and you will be notified by email. Meanwhile, you can continue using Faviki for your new bookmarks!

Does Faviki‘s ability to use semantic tags appeal to you? Do you look forward to giving a whole new meaning to your bookmark collection? Share your thoughts in the comments!

The post Auto-Tag Delicious Bookmarks and Share Them Easily On Twitter With Faviki appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Whatever the nature of your interest, it doesn’t help to start on the wrong foot. It is often necessary to separate the wheat from the chaff on the web, so here is a guide to get you started with 10 websites to educate yourself about psychology. You might also want to check out 8 Websites With Cool Free Personality Traits Tests.

#1: PsychCentral

This site is one of the largest independent psychology websites launched in 1995, providing information, resources, & hosting over 150 support groups. It was named one of 50 Best Websites of 2008 by Time Magazine and has been recognized in many noteworthy publications.

Key sections on the psychology website are:

• Mental conditions and disorders.
• Psychological tests & quizzes.
• Ask The Therapist and Q&A.
• Medication drugs library.
• Over a dozen blogs with different focus areas.
• Latest news from the world of psychology.
• Research section with information on clinical trials.
• Resources section with 4000 links; reviewed and categorized.
• Psychology book reviews.
• Community forums & weekly live chats.

#2: American Psychological Association

With over 150,000 members, the APA is the world’s largest association of psychologists. APA has recently launched a newly redesigned psychology website that is attractive and easy to navigate.

• Psychology Topics offers a tag cloud view of popular topics or a list view of all topics. Each topic page leads to a page where you can find all related resources such as articles, press releases, books, videos, etc.
• Publications section is a gateway to APA’s vast repository of books, journals, databases, videos, software, magazines, brochures, reports, etc. You can browse by type of publication, or by subject.
• Psychology Help Center features articles and helpful information for daily emotional well-being. There are also specific interest areas for work/school, family, disasters, etc.
• Education section looks at the involvement of psychology in education from K-12 to post-graduate and lifelong learning.
• Careers section has resources for early career psychologists, professional development opportunities, as well as job-related information.

Whether you are interested in psychology as a layperson, student, researcher, or practitioner, this is a must-bookmark website.

#3: National Institute of Mental Health

NIMH is a Federal agency that conducts and supports research on mental illnesses.

The NIMH website features:

• Extensive information on mental health topics.
• Access to free NIMH publications on a host of topics from disorders to treatment.
• Information about clinical trials for both participants and researchers.
• Access to statistical information about mental disorders.
• News in the science of mental health.

#4: Wikipedia

Wikipedia, the largest, free, multi-lingual encyclopedia on the web has great informative articles on a variety of subjects in psychology. From the history of psychology and methods of psychological research to its numerous sub-fields of study, Wikipedia is a continuously updated treasure trove of knowledge.

Each page you navigate to has a wealth of resources from people to publications, all organized in a structured fashion unique to Wikipedia.

Also check out Psychology at Wikiversity, which has its own School of Psychology.

#5: Articles, Research, & Resources in Psychology

This is a psychology website managed by Ken Pope, Ph.D., offering free full-text articles from a variety of medical journals and a variety of other resources related to psychology. While there are many useful sections for laypersons, the information is invaluable for psychology professionals.

The site covers a broad range of subjects including licensing laws, regulation, ethics, medication, military related issues, suicide and sexual issues, etc. A unique feature that deserves mention is that the website is designed for people with disabilities in accordance with W3C Accessibility Guidelines.

While the sites above offer comprehensive resources for anyone even remotely interested in psychology, the following websites are useful especially for non-professionals interested in learning about psychology.

#6: WebMD Mental Health

WebMD’s Mental Health section has exhaustive information on disorders and treatment. It features Guide sections for specific disorders, with informative slideshows, latest news, and articles. All this is backed by the popular community section featuring blogs and message boards.

#7: About.com Psychology

This website is part of the About.com network, and offers easy-to-read articles on psychology. Many different topics are covered from theories and sub-fields to career and education.

#8: Psychology Today

Psychology Today is the website of the bi-monthly magazine. The site focuses on mental well-being and is geared towards therapy and treatment for mental illnesses. The content is easy-to-read and focused on non-professional laypersons.

#9: PsyBlog

Maintained by a researcher Jeremy Dean, this blog is based on scientific psychology and is one of the best individual psychology blogs. Articles focus on understanding how our minds work and why we think and act the way we do.

#10: BBC Science & Nature: The Mind

The Mind section in BBC’s Science & Nature psychology website is fun and informative to explore.

It has facts, surveys, and interactive features that teach you about different things like the brain, emotions & instincts, intelligence & memory, mental disorders, etc.

The world of psychology is very vast indeed. Will these websites help to educate yourself about psychology? Are there any of your favorite sites we missed? Share your thoughts with us in the comments!

The post 10 Psychology Websites To Help Educate Yourself appeared first on MakeUseOf.

CompareMyDocs comes to our rescue in such situations. You can check out their demo video in our coverage of CompareMyDocs in the MakeUseOf Directory. It might sound unbelievable, but you don’t need to sign up or even register to use this incredible web app that lets you compare documents online ““ just use it for free! In this article, let us consider a life-like scenario and see how it works in detail.

A Collaboration Example

Our loyal readers have been helping us test the new MakeUseOf theme. Suppose we had an internal status report being passed around on the various tasks involved. Such a status report is a good example of real-life document collaboration. In this case, we would have Mark, our Managing Editor, send out a blank template and ask everyone to update the document with details of the status of their tasks. Earlier, there were two possible scenarios:

Scenario #1: Mark sends the document to one team member, gets an updated version back, then sends it to the next team member to get her update, and so on. Needless to say, Aibek, our Editor-In-Chief, would be fuming by the time Mark had consolidated the distributed MakeUseOf team‘s inputs.

Scenario #2: Marks sends out the document to all of us, and we all update it as soon as it’s convenient for us and send it back. Mark then opens two documents at a time in MS Word, consolidates the changes, then opens the third one. As you can imagine, with a team of over 30, Mark would spend hours in preparing a consolidated status update.

I am sure you must have encountered both these situations very often. Enter CompareMyDocs.

In Scenario #2, Mark has multiple versions of the same document. Let’s say he has received 3 updated versions, aside from his original:

Uploading Documents

Mark goes to CompareMyDocs and uploads the documents. You can upload any .doc, .docx, or .rtf documents up to 7 at a time.

After clicking Compare, CompareMyDocs scans all document versions for changes. After a few seconds depending upon the size of the document and number of changes, the changes by each team member are shown in a different color like this:

Reviewing Changes

Shown on the right are all the differences in each version by different authors. Roll-over of the mouse lets you Accept, Scrap, Hide, or Reject each change. Scrapping a change turns it into a Comment or Note.

So if Mark accepts this change as shown above, the document is updated after merging that change:

Merging and Saving

Once Mark has finished reviewing all the changes by accepting, or rejecting them, he clicks Save on the toolbar to download the final consolidated version.

Additional Goodies

• CompareMyDocs supports basic editing and formatting of documents right within the browser interface.
• An Adobe AIR based desktop version called TextFlow will be released soon, so that you can even work on multiple document versions offline.
• The company has also launched an API for this collaborative editing functionality. It would be interesting if cloud storage services like DropBox, who support versioning, integrate with the TextFlow API.

Whether the collaboration is between students for a thesis, teachers for a curriculum, team members for a status report, or anything else you can imagine, CompareMyDocs can become an indispensable tool anywhere people collaborate on documents. You can also check out our other articles on collaboration or the free collaboration tools listed in our directory.

Will CompareMyDocs optimize your collaboration workflow? Do you think this is a unique service? Let us hear from you in the comments!

The post Compare & Merge Multiple Documents Online with CompareMyDocs appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Here are 10 solid Twitter safety tips you can make use of to enjoy Twitter and protect yourself.

#1: Never Share Personal Information

This has to be the first and foremost guideline and cannot be stressed enough. Never share your email, personal or business address, telephone numbers, etc. on Twitter unless you are absolutely sure what you are doing.

Geotagging is an optional Twitter feature that makes your exact location public. If you do not wish to automatically broadcast your physical location, make sure that the setting is disabled in your Twitter settings.

#2: Review Applications That Use Your Twitter Account

Avoid web-based applications that ask you to supply your Twitter username and password. Well behaved applications use Twitter OAuth and do not ask you to provide your Twitter password.

Regularly review the list of applications you have authorized to access your Twitter account via the Twitter Settings Connections page. Remove all applications from that list that you no longer need or use.

#3: Regularly Change Your Password

Automated bots are used by hackers to gain access to your Twitter account. Use strong passwords and keep changing your password every 4-6 weeks to ensure maximum safety. You can use these 5 Free Password Generators for Nearly Unhackable Passwords or Create Strong Passwords That You Can Remember Easily.

#4: Preview Short URL’s Before Clicking

Shortened URLs are often used to hide unsafe web addresses. Clicking and visiting unsafe websites leads to dangers of malware, phishing websites, etc. When using Twitter clients like TweetDeck, turn on the “Show Preview Information for Short URLs” option. If you are using Firefox, you can use extensions like LongURL Mobile Expander or DeTiny URL Expander. Another option is to use bookmarklets and scripts like Unhid and Untiny.

#5: Beware Of Unsolicited DMs

Phishing attacks often use Direct Messages to lure unsuspecting users to a login page where they are asked to provide their username and password. The problem is that you may receive such a DM from a trustworthy user you are following, whose account has been compromised. Hence, there is no foolproof way to ascertain whether a DM is authentic or suspicious.

You should use your judgment and discretion while clicking URL’s in DMs. If there is any reason to suspect that the DM is strange or weird in any way, simply delete it and let the user know. Follow the Twitter Spam account for regular updates and information on Twitter scams.

#6: Use Private Twitter Accounts

If you are using Twitter to communicate among a chosen group of friends, colleagues, or family, consider making your Twitter feed private. This can also be a recommended option for youngsters on Twitter. To make an account private, go to your Twitter Settings, and select the “Protect my tweets“ option.

#7: Block & Report Spam

If you receive spam via @replies, block and report the account as spam. Many Twitter clients let you do that from within their interface. You can follow the Twitter Spam account and send a direct message with the name of the account to report a spammer. Manage your followers and friends as discussed in 12 Solid Tips to Enhance Your Twitter Reputation to reduce your spam.

#8: Avoid Account Suspension By Respecting Twitter Limits

Ensure that you adhere to Twitter’s Best Practices for Following Limits. These are especially important when using automated tools to tweet or follow/unfollow users. Violating follow limit rules may lead to suspension of your Twitter account. The key limits to be aware of are:

• Limit of maximum 1000 tweets and 250 DMs per day.
• Aggressively following or unfollowing hundreds of users within a day can lead to account suspension.
• You need sufficient followers before you can follow more than 2000 users.

Do not use any service or application that promises to get you “hundreds of followers quickly”. These are guaranteed ways of making your Twitter account suspicious and lead to your account being suspended.

#9: Avoid Being Impersonated

Twitter permits impersonation only for parody. Even if you don’t use Twitter at all, someone else may be using your name to impersonate you on Twitter. This can lead to grave reputation problems for your business, professional and personal life.

If you come across any Twitter account impersonating you in an illegitimate fashion, submit a web request on Twitter from the Support page and choose “Impersonation“ in the “Regarding“ drop-down. You can also send an email to impersonation@twitter.com supplying details listed here.

#10: Use An Anti-Virus and Firewall

Finally, no list of safety tips would be complete without a reminder to protect your computer using firewalls and an up-to-date anti-virus. Check MakeUseOf’s extensive coverage of free Anti-Virus software and Security articles to safeguard your computer when using online applications like Twitter.

Are there any other tips we missed? Will these help you to keep your Twitter account safe? Shout out in the comments!

The post 10 Twitter Safety Tips To Protect Your Account & Identity appeared first on MakeUseOf.

DNS: A Backgrounder

In simplified terms, Domain Name Servers (DNS) are translators that convert website names to IP Addresses. When you click on a bookmark, hyper-link, or enter an address like www.makeuseof.com in your browser, the browser sends that name to a DNS Server that helps route the request to the appropriate IP Address of that URL. Think of this as your letter for “John Doe” being sent to his correct home address.

When your ISP configures your Internet connection, it is set to use the ISP’s DNS service. However, you are free to use other alternatives, as Karl explained in Open DNS Works Great As A Free Web Content Filtering Solution. Thus, you can use Open DNS or the new Google Public DNS, to replace your ISP’s DNS.

Why should you use something other than what your ISP gives you for free? As you can see, Open DNS offers rich content-filtering options for privacy and family safety. Google Public DNS has been engineered by Google for faster performance and better security. However, because of the complex variables involved, no single option can be said to be the best for all when it comes to speed. So how do you find out which DNS is the fastest for you? Enter NameBench, a free tool to help you find the fastest DNS for you.

Introducing NameBench

NameBench is a portable application (no installation!) that works across the Windows, Mac, or Linux platforms. It runs a benchmark test on your computer, using either your web browser’s history or a standardized test data set to find out which DNS service returns the fastest results for your location. Download and run the application from the Google Code repository here.

Starting the NameBench Test

Before you run NameBench, make sure you have closed all applications using the Internet. This will ensure that the results are not distorted by interference from other programs using your network bandwidth. Then, launch the application, and you will see a screen like this:

The Nameservers at the top shows the DNS servers you are currently using. If you are not interested in technical details, simply click “Start Benchmark”. The test takes between 10-20 minutes, so you can take a coffee break while it runs.

NameBench Results

After the test is complete, your browser launches to show you the results. At the very top are the main results (in this case, showing that my ISP’s DNS is hopelessly slow):

At the right, you can see which DNS service works the fastest for you. To change your DNS configuration, you can follow the instructions at the Google Public DNS site, using the recommended configuration from the test, instead of Google’s Public DNS.

NameBench Options Explained

NameBench includes public DNS providers like OpenDNS and UltraDNS in its test via the first checkbox. The “Include best available regional DNS services“ option tests the health and response time of over 1000 DNS servers worldwide so that it can include those that are close to you and may be the fastest. Leave both options checked for best results.

The “Benchmark Data Source” drop-down will give you the option of choosing your browser history or a standardized data set of the top 10,000 Internet websites. Many of those websites would be foreign-language ones that you never visit, so keep the default option and use your browser history for the test.

Using the “Benchmark Data Selection“ mode, you can choose a random or sequential set of websites from your browser history. The default “Weighted“ mode uses more of your recent browser history and is the best option for most users. Finally, the Number of tests represents how many requests will be sent to the servers, and should be kept over 100, preferably 150-200. Running the test more than once with “Number of runs“ > 1, will result in DNS caching being used for subsequent runs if you want to test performance with and without caching.

NameBench Results In Detail

The Tested DNS Servers table shows a list of the DNS Servers that were used for the test, with the corresponding response times, notes, and errors if any. NameBench allows a maximum of 10 DNS servers at a time.

This graph shows the average and fastest response times for the top 5 servers.

Finally, this pretty graph shows the percentage of times a response was received from a server within the first 200 milliseconds.

Grab your free download of NameBench and run the test. You may be surprised by the results! Did you change your DNS servers after using it? Is your web browsing faster as a result? Tell us in the comments!

The post Find Fastest DNS and Optimize Your Internet Speed appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Timo Elliott of SAP Web 2.0 has developed several free Powerpoint Twitter tools. Download the tools for MS Office from the download page for your version of MS Office and unzip the archive. You need PowerPoint 2003 or 2007 and Adobe Flash to use them. Note that these Powerpoint Twitter tools are free prototypes with limited support.

Auto Tweet Notes From PowerPoint Presentations

AutoTweet is a PowerPoint Add-in that automatically tweets Notes from your presentation. First, you need to install the Add-in to PowerPoint. Go to the Office Button, and click PowerPoint Options > Add-Ins.

From the Manage drop-down, select PowerPoint Add-ins, and click Go”¦. In the Add-Ins dialog, click Add New, and select the AutoTweet.ppam PowerPoint Addin file that you unzipped from the downloaded archive. After you see the AutoTweet add-in installed with a checkbox, close the dialog.

Next, open the presentation in PowerPoint, and go to the Add-Ins tab on the ribbon. In the Menu Commands on the left, you will see AutoTweet. Click this to bring up a dialog where you can enable or disable AutoTweet and enter your Twitter username and password. You can optionally add a hashtag to your tweets and choose to get a successful tweet confirmation while presenting.

This tool auto tweets the Notes from each slide in your presentation. However, you might have some additional content in your Notes not meant to be tweeted. For this purpose, the tool only tweets text that is enclosed in brackets: [twitter] this text will be tweeted [/twitter]. For example, here is how I made my note to be automatically tweeted during my presentation.

Here is how the tweet appeared on Twitter with the #hashtag specified in the dialog automatically added by the tool:

Remember that each time you run a slideshow of this presentation, the tool will send out tweets on your Twitter account! If you wish to practice delivering your presentation, turn AutoTweet Off in the settings dialog before running your practice slideshow. Also, in order to use the next feature we are going to discuss, it would be a good idea to tweet an instruction in the beginning to the Twitter audience to use a specific hashtag while tweeting about your presentation. We will see how you can use this to gather feedback in the next section.

Show Feedback From Twitter in PowerPoint

Another useful tool in this pack is a slide that allows you to automatically display a tweet cloud in your presentation with search terms you can specify. Most Blog Camps and Conferences today use a specific hashtag for tweets about it, for example #140conf or #leweb. If you are presenting at a Blog Camp or Conference, you can use the hashtag as your search term to get real-time feedback from Twitter to show within your PowerPoint presentation. You can use this as a way to discuss the feedback with the audience, or simply as an engaging display in between different sessions.

To use this feature, follow these steps:

1. Open your presentation in PowerPoint.
2. Open the powerpoint_twitter_tools.pptx presentation from the downloaded archive.
3. Navigate to Slide 4: “PowerPoint Twitter Feedback Slide 1″.
4. Click on the slide content visible as a large “X”, and Copy it to the clipboard.
   
5. In your presentation, go to a blank slide where you want to display the feedback and Paste.
6. Adjust the size of the empty feedback placeholder to suit the template and style of your presentation.

Now, when you run the slideshow of your presentation and navigate to the Feedback Slide, you will see a blank feedback slide with instructions in the center. Enter the search term in the box on the bottom left and press Enter. Tweets from Twitter containing the search term will automatically be shown in the slide. For example, here is how the chatter on Twitter about the #LeWeb conference looks like:

You can click on the Twitter avatar or the tweet cloud to open a browser window that displays the Twitter profile or tweet. To move forward in your presentation, you need to click the title or side area outside the content area you pasted. The slide refreshes by itself after 30 seconds and you can view history using the page navigation arrows. Also check out Slide 5 from the downloaded presentation which displays tweets in a grid layout.

Now, the next time you present with the help of AutoTweet, you will no longer be clueless about what people are tweeting about your presentation! Also, your tweets themselves will be a part of all the tweets on Twitter making you an active participant.

Will you use these Powerpoint Twitter tools for your next presentation? Do you think this will make your presentation cool? Tell us in the comments!

The post How To Integrate Twitter with PowerPoint: Tweet Presentation Notes & See Instant Feedback appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Making your blog or website language-friendly is not at all difficult. In this article, let us see how you can use free translation widgets on your site to allow visitors to instantly translate your website into the most popular foreign languages. If you want to let users subscribe to translated RSS feeds of your website, you should check out Mloovi. Let’s see how to use the Google Translate Gadget and the Microsoft Translator Widget and see how they compare.

Translate Your Website with Google Translate Gadget

Google Translate Gadget is powered by Google Translate Tools, and supports over 50 languages. The “gadget” is nothing but a short code snipped that you can place anywhere on your website. If you have a blog, the best place for the gadget is your blog’s sidebar. As an example, we’ll assume you have an English website powered by WordPress. Follow these steps:

1. Go to Google Translate Tools and choose the language of your website.
2. If you wish, you can restrict which languages you want to support. It is best to use the default All languages option.
3. Copy the code snippet shown on the page.
4. In your WordPress Dashboard, paste the code in a Text Widget in your Appearance > Widgets section and add it to your sidebar.

That’s it! Your blog can now be read in over 50 languages.

When users who have set a different default language in their browser visit your blog, they are prompted to automatically translate your website to their native language. You can also check how your blog looks in different languages.

Also, when a translated page is viewed, moving your mouse over the translated text paragraph pops up the original text. You can conveniently compare the original and the translated text in this way.

Microsoft Translator Widget

The Microsoft Translator Widget supports over 20 languages. This is the same translation engine that is used in MS Office, Bing, and the Messenger translation bot we previously covered on MakeUseOf. To use the Microsoft Translator Widget, follow these steps:

1. Go to the Microsoft Translator Widget page.
2. Enter your website or blog URL address and the language of your site.
3. Choose the widget of the widget as suitable for your blog. You can experiment back and forth if you need.
4. Choose a suitable color based on the theme of your blog.
5. Check the “I agree to the terms of use” box, and click Generate code to get the code snippet.
6. Copy paste the code snippet in a Text Widget in your blog sidebar.

That’s it! Your blog can now be read in over 20 languages. Just like the Google Translate Widget, when a translated page is viewed, the original text is visible on mouse rollover. Here is how the widgets look in the blog sidebar when stacked on top of each other:

Which Widget Should You Use?

Choosing the right widget for your website may not be a simple matter of comparing the number of languages supported. Here are factors you can consider:

• Obviously, the Google Gadget gives you the widest reach because it supports far greater languages (50 vs. 20)
• The Google Gadget auto-detects the user’s language and prompts the user to translate
• The Microsoft Widget supports different colors to suit your blog theme, while the Google Gadget has the classic minimalist look
• The Microsoft Widget has a width option and looks different depending upon the size you choose
• Lastly, the Microsoft Widget supports “Progressive Rendering”, which means web pages show up in the translated language in incremental fashion. Users do not need for the complete page to be translated before they start reading. This is useful if you have long pages of text.

You might also want to check out ConveyThis, which takes a different approach by popping up a dialog letting users choose from different online translation services.

Needless to say, machine (robot) translation has its limitations. Nevertheless, it can surely make your webpage comprehensible to foreign language users, who might otherwise quickly jump to another website. Will you try using these free tools on your site? Do they work well on your blog? Tell us in the comments!

The post 2 Great Widgets to Translate Your Website into 20+ Languages appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Beyond this simplicity however, there are some cool things you can do to unleash the power of the platform. In this article, let us look at some Posterous tips for power users.

Posterous Tip #1: Use Posterous on a Subdomain

The Posterous Help describes how you can set it up on your custom domain. But what if you use WordPress or Blogger to power the main blog of your site? In this case, it makes sense to setup Posterous on a subdomain of your site.

If your site is www.yourname.com, you can setup posterous.yourname.com as your Posterous site. Follow these steps to do so:

1. Setup the subdomain as you wish on your domain using tools provided by your domain host. Typically these will be part of your Control Panel or Dashboard.
2. Add a CName Record: “posterous.yourname.com. IN CNAME posterous.com.” You may have to ask your domain hosting support to do this for you.
3. Specify the subdomain in Manage > Settings.

Posterous Tip #2: Selective Autopost

Beyond posting your email and other media to your Posterous blog, you can set it up to automatically post to other services as well.

To enable Autopost, go to Manage > Autopost and add the services you wish. Now, when you email post@posterous.com, your post is automatically sent to all the services you have configured under Autopost settings.

There are times when you don’t want to autopost everywhere. There is no need to change your settings just for such instances. You can selectively autopost, by tweaking the email address.

As an example, suppose you have configured Facebook, Flickr and Twitter under your Autopost settings. Let’s say you use Flickr for all your cool outdoor photographs and prefer Facebook for photographs of people at conferences you attend. You also want to tweet when you post any photos anywhere. When emailing your photos, send your outdoor nature photography to flickr+twitter@posterous.com, and send conference photos to facebook+twitter@posterous.com.

Posterous Tip #3: Advanced Facebook Autopost

By default, Posterous does not post your photos and videos to your Facebook photo albums and videos. For more fine-grained control over how Posterous auto-posts to Facebook, on the Autopost settings page, go to Edit under Actions for the Facebook service.

First, choose whether you want Posterous to actually update your Facebook status message, or simply update your activity stream. Then, you can choose to enable autoposting of photos and videos if you wish. The Minimum gallery size determines the number of photos that creates a separate Facebook album.

Posterous Tip #4: Advanced Bookmarklet Settings

Using the bookmarklet is almost a must to make the best use of Posterous. The bookmarklet makes it very simple to instantly post text, documents, pictures, music or video from any web page to your Posterous.

From the Advanced Options link at the bottom of the bookmarklet, you can also include tags and choose whether to autopost that item to your other services.

Posterous Tip #5: Use Google Analytics to Track Traffic Stats

Bring the awesome power of Google Analytics to your Posterous blog to see detailed traffic stats. Here’s how:

1. If you haven’t sign up for Google Analytics with your Posterous site URL.
2. Get the Google Analytics Domain ID for your site, which looks like “UA-123456-1″ with different numbers.
3. Enter the Domain ID in Manage > Settings > Analytics in Posterous.

Now you can see page views, average time spent on site, referring sites, and a plethora of other traffic stats.

Posterous Tip #6: Use Feedburner For Your Posterous RSS Feed

You can replace the default RSS Feed provided by Posterous with a Feedburner one. With Feedburner, you can keep track of the number of your RSS subscribers, create browser-friendly feeds, add social bookmarking links, and lots more.

To use Feedburner with Posterous, follow these steps:

1. Get your Posterous Feed URL (seen on the right of your Posterous blog).
2. Burn that feed in Feedburner and copy the feed address you create.
3. In Manage > Settings > Analytics, specify the part of your Feedburner URL after http://feeds.feedburner.com/.

You now get all the benefits of using Feedburner for your Posterous RSS Feed.

These are some of the ways to get more out of Posterous. Have other Posterous tips to share? Tell us in the comments!

The post 6 Cool Tips To Get More Out Of Posterous appeared first on MakeUseOf.